Ligue des Patriotes

The Ligue des Patriotes was a nationalist league in French politics which existed from 1882 to 1924. It began as a nonpartisan organization which swore revenge against the German Empire for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War and trained its members in gymnastics and rifle shooting, and its creation was authorized by Leon Gambetta. However, its later association with the populist and ultranationalist general Georges Boulanger alienated many republican members. After Boulanger's exile in 1889, the French government suppressed the league, but it was revived in 1898 amid the Dreyfus affair. The League came to have 60,000 members, who engaged in violently anti-Semitic demonstrations. After a failed coup in 1899, its leader Paul Deroulede was exiled and the organization was once again banned, only for the nationalist leader Maurice Barres to stage one last revival in 1914 on the eve of World War I. Its final dissolution occurred in 1924.